Talking

Several days ago,TM held a press conference and over there it claimed that High Speed Broandband(HSBB) will release to the public on March 24 at Dataran Merdeka.Malaysian Prime Minister Dato Najib Tun Razak will join in the event and officially launch the National Broadband initiative,which HSBB is the flagship project.    -Sourced by Bernama

I think that will be impressive as the new HSBB will run at least 3 times faster than the current fastest plan to the consumers.TM also promised that this time the plans will not be as expensive as the existing plans.

I know that some people living in Subang Jaya,Shah Alam,Taman Tun and TTDI have already been selected as beta users to try out the service and based on some leaking news,the result is quite good.

The known information shows that the plans will include some value added services,such as IPTV.Well,I’m very interested in the new service.I hope the service could reach my living area as soon as possible.Meanwhile,I welcome the HSBB users to leave some feedback here.

I’m waiting for the news about High Speed BroadBand(HSBB),but till now I can’t see any movements in my living area.Well,Streamyx,the ADSL service provided by TM,seems to be quite active recently.4 months ago,it just brought super upgrade deals and now it introduces BlockBuster deals which are not only for broadband services,but also for voice services.

I think TM had met some difficulties in past several years with the competitions from those mobile service providers in voice service sector.In fact,I haven’t made fixed calls for years because the calling rate from a landline to a mobile phone is too expensive,even higher than the rate calling from a mobile phone.

Finally TM realized it and resolved it.At least the new rate,10sen/min from fixed to mobile(in BB Deal 1/2MBPS and Voice Deal 68),is reasonable as it’s almost at the same level compared to the mobile charges.Also the new deal provides a free DECT phone that makes us more convenient to call someone at home through home line.By the way,I think the free calls to local and nationwide are the big points too.I believe that can reduce the communication costs for the consumers,less charges on the mobile bills.That’s great!

A free WIFI modem will be given by subscribing the plan.However,I don’t think that will be the nice one.Maybe I will just put it at the corner of the house and only temporarily use it when my current modem is dead.

The details are as follow:

The deals are available to all new and existing customers who are not binding with any contract.You could get more information here or visit your nearest TMpoint.Anyway,I’m still looking forward to HSBB.

HD(High definition) is everywhere now and Skype is turning into HD group too.The latest Skype Beta allows the users to make HD-quality calls to each other.That means the video conversation will be much clearer than ever before,just like talking in front of a table.However,some requirements need to meet in order to make the HD-quality call work:

• a high-speed broadband connection (we recommend sustained 1 Mbps symmetrical bandwidth or higher)
• a new HD webcam
• a PC with a 1.8 GHz dual-core processor
• Skype 4.2 Beta for Windows

Well,I’m now testing this new version.It’s working fine with Windows 7 and performing better than the previous versions which I used,especially on utilisation of bandwidth and quality of voice and video calls.I’m willing to try a HD-quality video call too,but I don’t fit the first two requirements.Skype will launch a series of HD webcams later in this year which has video encoding and processing onboard that optimizes the HD video.So the only issue is on the connection as in Malaysia,the largest ISP-TM only provides ADSL service to residential consumers that only has maximum 512Kbps for upload.I hope I could have a faster connection soon.

You could get more details for Skype here.

The Asia America Gateway(AAG) was said to be introduced in August,but now delay to November 11st,2009.This is the first high-bandwidth optical fiber submarine cable system connecting 10 locations:Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Vietnam, Guam and Hawaii with the US West Coast.

The cable has 20,000KM-long and been capable up to 480 Gigabits per second to meet present and future requirements for telecommunications services.At the meanwhile,another 8,000KM-long cable serving for the local region-Asia Pacific Gateway(APG) is under construction and expected to be completed in 2011.

So finally AAG is joining to the service,but how will it improve our broadband service by TM and other local ISPs?I don’t know yet.Wait for another 5 days and we could get some answer from ourselves.

I always talk about High Speed Broadband(HSBB) project in these days because GoMobile09 EXPO is just held in Malaysia and ministry of Info,Communications and Culture takes advantages of it to announce some good news during the press time.

According to the latest report from Bernama,HSBB will go alive in next June.Currently TM is doing upgrading on exchanges and core network,as well as enhancing on AAG undersea cable system which had completed the construction work 1 month ago.

Why did I say that ‘half confirmed’?Because up to now,I received a lot of different timelines of the project and all came from official sources,that confuses me.Anyway,it should come to service the sooner the better.